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Wednesday, April 15, 2009

"On The Beach"-- the last album in Neil's so called "Ditch Trilogy" contains the well know Blues Trilogy: Ambulance Blues, Vampire Blues, and Revolution Blues. Here's an interesting essay from Crawdaddy "Revolution Blues: Heart of Weirdness" by Braden Towne:

Something about being splendidly famous didn’t sit right with Neil Young. His star had steadily ascended throughout the later portion of the ’60s, and then went supernova with the release of Harvest in 1972. This unsettling career peak set against the backdrop of an aimless and endless military conflict, a freshly confirmed second term for a conservative warmonger (what year was this again?), and a handful of overdosing cronies sent Young careening into the abyss. The tours and records that immediately followed were a reckless expedition into the jungles of paranoia and despair, navigated with bloodshot eyes. By 1974, the intrepid songwriter probably needed a vacation from all that was heavy, and the aptly titled On the Beach could have been it; but two songs in, like a feverish jetlag nightmare, the demons pulled Neil down into the sinister funk of “Revolution Blues.”

7 Comments:

HEY EVERYONE! GOOD NEWS I JUST FOUND OUT ABOUT THE ARCHIVES BLURAY AND DVD SETS!

"Includes a physical card with instructions to download MP3s of all the audio tracks from the Archives!"

I'm so stoked! Neil and co. do think about the fans! Now I'll be able to buy the DVD set I've been wanting so much and will also be able to make CDs for work and my car! Sorry if this has been mentioned before, but this is the first I've known of it!

I understand Crosby and Nash were less than amused by the song when Neil wrote it, just a few years after the Manson celebrity Murders in Hollywood, and were less than willing to play it live on the 1974 CSNY tour. Makes sense, these two hippies were always more into flower-power propaganda than Neil was. He knew it, when the sixties ended - this great song proves it. Even today, with Manson still locked away, it's scary.

ps: anybody makes sense of the 'ÿes that was me with the doves...' part?

It's common knowledge that Neil met Manson through Dennis Wilson of the 'Beach Boy's'.... even gave him a motorcycle and tried to get him a recording contract at Reprise through Mo Ostin!...Good thing Neil split when he did cuz obviously Manson was one who also 'could not take the rejection'!!!!

It makes you wonder had Manson been able to channel his muse and artistic genious to an accepting and admiring audiance rather than take the path that he instead chose, if he would have, indeed, been as high of caliber of an artist as Neil, or as perhaps as Bob Dylan had become. Neil himself even said of Manson that "he was a great singer, guitarist, and songwriter-a natural born RockStar"!...to recieve a complement like that from Neil himself, there had to be something special inside that otherwise tortured soul!